Medford and St. Helens

A few of the people who helped make my time in Medford fun:

Vicki, my reel mammie. Sometime I would love to blog all about her and her amazing life, but it might get too personal :P She is one of the best influences in my life, I'll just leave it at that.

Ian, Vicki's grandson. He was being camera shy, but he let me take a picture of his toy. It's one of the Star Wars creatures, and I can't remember the name!

Vicki's husband, Tommy. He is wonderful, the youngest 91 year old I have ever known.

This is Vicki's brother Danny. See the resemblance?

Red Robin, our favorite birthday restaurant. That's Chris on the left, Vicki's daughter and Ian's mom.

The view down the road from Vicki and Tommy's house. I love this view. The countryside....sigh.

For some reason, I only took a few shots in Portland. Anyone who has spent time there should immediately know what this is. If you don't know, spend more time in Portland!

Mt. St. Helens! I thought I remembered this eruption really well, but I was only 2 when it happened - 1980. So my memory must have been from reading past accounts of it.

Much of the land around Helens is still bare. After the blast, the ground was completely sterile, making it essentially a virgin environment. Pretty good opportunity for scientists actually.

The land hit by the worst of the lava and mudslides is now a huge expanse of valleys and ridges - fascinating actually. You can go hiking down there, but I didn't have enough time to really do it justice, so I settled for viewing from afar.

The remnants of charred trees dot the landscape around Helens.

That's it :) Short post this time. I'm hungry and tired, hence the lack of much to say. But I decided to stop using excuses to prevent myself from blogging. Better an uninspired post than nothing at all, right?